Acquainted with the Night
by Amatara
Summary: "I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light." Short alternative coda to "If It Had To Perish Twice" by Nemo The Everbeing.


The doorknob was cool to the touch, but not freezing. Steel, not ice; the door turning smoothly on its hinges and into the corridor. Just a gentle push, and he was through.

Cooper let out a breath through pursed lips, one he hadn't quite realized he was holding. Then he took a second, and a third, letting them out the same way, until they found a rhythm of their own.

His wrist still hurt where he'd twisted it – or rather where Albert had, in dragging him from the car – and his head hurt a little too, but that was okay. They'd bandaged him up nicely, did a fine job on his burns and scrapes, which were superficial anyway. Apart from that, he'd refused to take anything as innocent as aspirin. The line between dreams and reality was a fine enough one without drugs to blur it even more. And pain worked as well as anything to help distinguish wrong from right.

There were shades of wrong, of course, like there were shades of anything: truth, virtue, every sentiment the human brain was capable of. As a child, he used to keep lists in his head. Blue ice-cream was a little wrong, in that the taste was fine, but only as long as he ate it with his eyes closed. Cheerleaders were a little wrong, because no matter how much he approved of girls dancing, he couldn't for the life of him see what those pompoms had to do with anything.

Right now, crossing the long, white-tiled hallway, he kept expecting his soles to squeak on the floor. But they didn't, and that was a little wrong too. The reason being, of course, that he wasn't wearing shoes but hospital slippers – not the flip-flop types but the regular ones – that didn't make a noise at all.

He counted the numbers until he found the room he needed, at the end of another white corridor. Opening the door with his good left hand, he wondered briefly what he was going to say. On the grand scale of right and wrong, today's experience didn't even rank among the worst. To him, at least, but of course his scale was hopelessly skewed, so it wasn't fair to expect anyone just to take it in stride. Least of all Albert. And then he didn't quite know where on the scale to put it, but yes – Albert Rosenfield, asleep in a hospital bed, was definitely wrong enough to make it there.

Not fast asleep, though, because he stirred the second Cooper shut the door behind him.

"Mph?" he groaned, then opened his eyes and said, "Coop." It was pure Albert that he'd look angry first, pissed off in fact, and self-conscious after. Also that he'd need two seconds, tops, to being fully awake and scowling. "How the hell am I flat on my back and you're not?"

He was still in his FBI-issue shirt and pants, which didn't surprise Cooper a bit. It figured that Albert would sooner agree to being pumped full of drugs than he would to wearing a hospital gown. At least someone had taken the liberty to get off his shoes.

"Our guy," Albert said, wincing as he pushed himself up on his elbows. "Where did they –"

"He's in good hands, Albert," Cooper said, and took a step closer to the chair beside the bed. It was a victory that he didn't sit down then and there, because damn, he was tempted. "Last I heard, they were taking him to surgery. Bad case of frostbite, but they said he'll live."

To an outsider, the relief in Albert's eyes would have seemed utterly strange. But Cooper had seen it often enough, every night he shocked out of a nightmare in some hotel room or other, with Albert's thumbs digging little holes into his arm. What he _wasn't_ used to was the look that followed it, wan and just a little wide-eyed. With all the times Albert had seen him hurt, they weren't quite accustomed to those roles being reversed. Albert would claim it was the pacifist vow that kept him from harm, but they both knew that was nonsense. Harm had a way of finding Cooper, even if he wasn't looking for it.

Albert, bless him, shook him out of that particular train of thought. "I'm not kidding, Coop. Unless that crash screwed up my brains big time, you were the one haemorrhaging at the sound of a goddamn radio. And don't tell me it was all just a dream, because if _that _was a dream, I'm the virgin Mary reincarnate. For one, a dream doesn't conjure mittens out of thin air. Not to mention yellow ones as ugly as these."

Cooper followed his glance to the bedside table, which held a glove that was indeed very yellow, very ugly, and undeniably his.

The problem, as always, was that things weren't that simple. He knew they'd crossed back into reality the moment he woke up to being hauled through shards of glass, and that what happened before hadn't been. But Albert was right, in that it wasn't a dream either. It was coming back to him now – how, digging for his handkerchief to bind a cut in his palm, he was surprised to find one he didn't recognize. Cooper knew every pattern of every handkerchief he owned, and this one definitely couldn't be his. It was Albert's, and it had been flecked with blood.

"Coop?" Albert's voice wavered slightly_._ "Don't tell me you don't remember."

He did, of course. He remembered the cold, sharp enough to make his throat hurt. He remembered the noise of the radio and the terror that had followed it, the coppery taste of the blood on his lip. He remembered saying _You are Albert fucking Rosenfield and you're better than this, _and he remembered the near-euphoria when the words were out.

He remembered kissing Albert and feeling, somehow, that was _right_.

"I remember," he said, and then he did sit down, because he wasn't sure his legs would hold him. "To answer your question, Albert: you're flat on your back because you have a bad ankle sprain, various first- and second-degree burns and a bruised rib." Stating the facts like that was almost comforting, and he felt a little more steady when he continued, "As for why you were asleep – I believed you could use the rest before we had this conversation. And honestly, Albert, so could I. So I may have hinted for them to… slip you a little something to help with that." He held up a hand at Albert's withering glare. "In case you're about to ask why I didn't take anything, the answer is simple. I didn't feel I could risk going to sleep."

For a second there, Albert looked tempted to say something scathing. Then his eyes softened. "Well, that explains the aftertaste," he muttered. "Reminds me of something my aunt Lydia used to cook for supper. Compliment the doctor on his recipe, will you?"

He reciprocated the attempt at lightness with a smile. "I took the liberty of anticipating on that, Albert, so I brought us something from the cafetaria. _Mocchachino. _The lady at the counter swore it was better than coffee, so who was I to contradict her?" His hand shook a little when he put the thermos bottle down, but Albert didn't notice. Or, more likely, he did notice, but was pretending not to.

"Better than the coffee they serve here? _That_ I can almost believe," Albert growled, as Cooper took two plastic cups from a dispenser and poured their drinks. They sipped in silence for a few long moments. Then Albert sighed and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Okay, Coop, let's cut the claptrap. What happened out there? I mean, really. That man –"

"That man, or someone through him, was calling for help." That came rolling out fast enough that he knew he'd been waiting for Albert to ask exactly that question. Not that he knew very well how to answer the rest of it, but at least he felt ready to try. "Hence the messages, the phonecalls. They weren't meant for us because clearly, we weren't much use trapped in our own car, but I believe..." He curled his fingers around the rapidly cooling cup. "I believe I might, subconsciously, have provided an opening for him to reach someone. That ambulance arrived much faster than it should have. As for how, or whom – I don't know, Albert. Frankly, I'm not sure I want to know."

"So that was your mind we were in? Is that what you're saying?" Said in a tone like Albert wanted him to answer that the mere idea was insane. Never mind they both knew it was as close to the truth as anything.

"I think… we were in all three of our minds, Albert," he said slowly. "Which means there's no way to know which of the events we witnessed were suggested by whom, I'm afraid."

They both fell silent, and Cooper took advantage of the lull to empty his cup. Which wasn't bad, but he still preferred terrible coffee over a barely-okay derivative of same. It seemed that Albert agreed, because he put his own cup down with a grimace. "But you think it happened _through_ you, because you're more susceptible to –"

"Yes."

If that was news to Albert, he didn't show it. Not that Cooper expected him to. That he didn't remember the nightmares didn't mean he forgot about waking up from them. What happened today, with the radio, wasn't quite a nightmare, but still similar enough that snapping out of it to the sight of Albert's face, not the ceiling of an empty room, had been a relief.

He thought, again, of Albert's moment of panic, and the way he'd talked – well, _more _than talked_ – _him through it. A moment Albert wouldn't have hadto endure, if not for being partnered with him – but maybe that was the point. Maybe all of this was academic. Because Albert still hadn't asked the question he _had_ to be asking himself, _which part of this was real_,and that he'd be afraid to ask was wrong on anyone's scale. Even on one as skewed as his own.

"Albert," he said, feeling breathless, like he'd been walking at a great height. "There is something I should have told you before. I realize – it may seem as if I'm taking you for granted, but I'm not. All those nights, all those dreams… You might feel it makes little difference whether you're there or not, but trust me. It makes all the difference in the world."

Albert's eyes widened, and then the mask slammed down, hard. "And you're telling me this _why_?"

"I'm telling you," he managed, "because, for a long time now I've been thinking – I can't be with anyone. I couldn't ask anyone to bear this burden with me, Albert, except... You do it willingly, and I thought – of all the wrong reasons to want to be with someone, _gratitude_… might just be the worst."

Albert's hand on the sheet was the only thing that moved. That, and his own hand, shuddering around his empty cup like it had started living a life of its own.

"I'm afraid, Albert," he said, fighting off something like panic. "Afraid to do this. I've been afraid for so long – that I'll end up hurting someone else, and it will be just like with the others –"

"Oh, so you think this way it won't hurt?" Albert's voice was harsh, but not with anger, and his eyes were pinpricks of color in the whiteness of the room, dark and solid and very much alive. "Don't give me that crap where you don't deserve me, Coop. I'd take anything, any reason at all, but _that_? Just –"

"I won't," he said, sucking in a breath through his mouth. "You're right. It's not a reason for anything."

"Not to mention it's hogwash."

"I can't make that call," he said, and then, "Albert, with everything that happened to me… How can you _not _be afraid?"

"Oh, I _am_," Albert said. A hand closed over his and steadied it, then pried his empty cup away. "Terrified," Albert continued. "Scared witless. Don't you even _think_ that I'm not." The cup went on the dresser, and then Albert's thumb found his arm and squeezed it. "But as you just made a point of telling me –" He dropped his voice to a whisper. "I'm Albert fucking Rosenfield. And _you_'re Dale fucking Cooper, and –"

" – we're better than this."

Albert's palm on his cheek said he even believed that.


End file.
